Land management organisations that sit outside the Category 1 and 2 responder framework, including North York Moors National Park (NYMNP), Forestry England and Natural England, played a critical role throughout the Fylingdales Moor wildfire. Their involvement brought essential landscape scale expertise, environmental intelligence and operational capability that significantly contributed to managing a complex and evolving incident across protected and environmentally sensitive terrain.

Command and control arrangements enabled effective engagement with these organisations as the incident escalated. Their participation within Tactical and Strategic Coordination Groups supported alignment between operational firefighting priorities and wider land management, conservation and recovery considerations. This included coordination on firebreak construction, access routes, habitat protection, and the management of designated sites, alongside close liaison with RAF Fylingdales, Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), and other specialist partners.

The scale, geographical spread and duration of the incident required sustained coordination across multiple agencies operating over a large and remote moorland environment. Integrating land management activity into the command framework presented early challenges, particularly in maintaining consistent visibility of deployment, tasking, and accountability across a rapidly developing operational footprint. These challenges reflected both the pace of escalation and the fact that several non LRF organisations are not routinely embedded within formal incident command structures.

Land management organisations contributed specialist capability that extended beyond support roles. Forestry England, for example, undertook early site monitoring following handover from the Service, supported suppression and containment activity within forestry land, and contributed plant, access and technical advice. NYMNP and Natural England provided critical environmental and ecological intelligence, advising on protected habitats, Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), historic environment sensitivities and the implications of tactical actions such as firebreak positioning and heavy plant use.

As the incident progressed, command and control arrangements evolved to better accommodate this breadth of non LRF activity. The introduction of additional command points, strengthened coordination processes and dedicated cells, including Logistics and Scientific/Technical support, improved oversight, clarified tasking and enhanced overall control. This enabled land management organisations to operate more effectively within the incident structure while continuing to discharge their statutory and stewardship responsibilities.

The incident highlighted differing levels of familiarity among non Category 1 and 2 responders with JESIP principles and formal multi-agency command arrangements. While engagement and cooperation were strong, there were opportunities to improve shared situational awareness, briefing consistency and understanding of roles within tactical and strategic command. These challenges were not failures of intent or capability, but reflections of the growing need to integrate land management bodies more routinely into major incident planning and exercising.

Overall, land management organisations made a valuable contribution to the response. The learning from this incident highlights the importance of earlier and more structured and integration into command and LRF pre-incident engagement, including clearer expectations around roles, information sharing, access to systems such as Resilience Direct, and integration into command and LRF coordination arrangements.

What Worked Well

• Early engagement of land management organisations brought critical landscape, environmental and access expertise into operational decision making
• Effective participation in TCG and SCG supported alignment between firefighting activity, conservation priorities and protection of designated sites
• Provision of specialist advice (habitats, SSSIs, historic environment) informed proportionate tactics such as firebreak placement and use of heavy plant
• Adaptive command arrangements (additional command points and specialist cells) improved integration and oversight as the incident escalated
• Clear commitment and flexibility from land management organisations supported sustained operations during a prolonged incident and into recovery.

Learning Opportunities

• LRF to consider how to improve access to shared information systems and strengthen familiarity with JESIP to enhance situational awareness and interoperability.
• Develop a wildfire engagement and pre-planning framework with land managers and key stakeholders, building on the existing Fire Operations Group (FOG) concept.